Microsoft was in a bit of a clean-up mode over the past couple days after an apparent glitch caused select Far Cry 4 owners to not have access to the game they digitally purchased. They have since assured customers that it was indeed the result of a glitch, and not a DRM policy.
The incident occurred on Monday after Far Cry 4 was mistakenly removed from the Xbox One Marketplace. Following that, reports began to pop up of customers unable to play their game, and were greeted with error code ‘0X87DE07D1’ and questioned if they bought the game. When Microsoft eventually put the game back onto the Marketplace early Tuesday morning, all the problems vanished.
Correlation between the game being removed from the Marketplace and the game immediately being unplayable led to the assumption that some, if not all, digital games may still require a check-up with some kind of server on Microsoft’s side. This of course was the original plan for the Xbox One, which required a constant online connection to be playable when the console was announced at E3 2013. Being that the company has back-peddled extremely hard from that statement, this Far Cry mishap felt like a slap in the face to many if it turned out to be a requirement.
Well, as it turns out, it was just a glitch and not an intentional tie between digital games and their presence on the Xbox Marketplace. Microsoft still has not explained specifically what caused the mix up, only that it is not apart of their standard DRM policy. Speaking to Gamespot, Microsoft stated, “If customers own the rights to a game, they can visit their download history and initiate a re-download whenever they please–even if the game has been delisted from Xbox Store and is no longer available for purchase.”
This does contradict a bit, as Gamespot pointed out, the clause in Microsoft’s support page that states “If the game was purchased in digital form and the owner is unable or unwilling to enable sharing, the owner has to be signed in and connected to Xbox Live for that game to be played.”
So for the time being, it’s probably safe to continue purchasing games digitally on your Xbox One if you wish, but glitches like this are bound to happen from time to time if Microsoft is somehow requiring a call home from its digital games.
[button type=”link” link=”http://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-makes-new-assurances-on-xbox-one-drm-pol/1100-6424559/” size=”btn-sm” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: GameSpot[/button]
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
